mafia

noun4

1. •
   a large secret group of criminals with leaders at the top, which makes money from drugs and threats
2. •
   A crime syndicate.
3. •
   [in compounds] An entity which attempts to control a specified arena by violence or threats.

   • Worse, it confirms what one always suspected about the 1930s literary mafia, with their graceless posing and relentless self-obsession — what terrible , terrible bores they were. — 1994
4. •
   A trusted group of associates, as of a political leader.

noun3

1. •
   The Mob: any particular mafia, mentioned uniquely within the discussion's established or implicit context, usually and especially the Sicilian-Italian–Italian-American one (especially in American English) but occasionally others (e.g., the Russian one, the Japanese one).
2. •
   The international criminal organization of Sicilian origin operating in Italy and the United States.
3. •
   Any other specific organized crime syndicate operating internationally in high-level organized crime; often with a modifying adjective, such as a nationality.

   • Somehow he managed to upset the Russian Mafia.